Suppose we assume that God exists, God is omniscient (i.e., God infallibly knows all of reality as it is), The future is causally open (i.e., there are multiple causally possible futures because some future event possibilities are causally undetermined). Now, suppose a sequence S of events (E1, E2, … , En) plays out a certain… Read More »
This is part nine of eleven in a series responding to the essays in Ben Arbour’s edited volume, Philosophical Essays against Open Theism (Routledge, 2019). In this post I tackle chapter 9 by Greg Welty, “Open Theism, Risk-Taking, and the Problem of Evil” (pp. 140–158). Welty’s argument, roughly, is that open theism enjoys virtually no… Read More »
This is part eight of eleven in a series responding to the essays in Ben Arbour’s edited volume, Philosophical Essays against Open Theism (Routledge, 2019). In this post I tackle chapter 8 by James N. Anderson, “‘May It Have Happened, Lord!’: Open Theism and Past-Directed Prayers” (pp. 121–139). This is one of the more interesting… Read More »
This is part six of eleven in a series responding to the essays in Ben Arbour’s edited volume, Philosophical Essays against Open Theism (Routledge, 2019). In this post I tackle chapter 6 by Katherin Rogers, “Foreknowledge, Freedom, and Vicious Circles: Anselm vs. Open Theism” (pp. 93–109). Rogers is a well-respected philosopher of religion and a… Read More »
This is part five of eleven in a series responding to the essays in Ben Arbour’s edited volume, Philosophical Essays against Open Theism (Routledge, 2019). In this post I tackle chapter 5 by Paul Helm, “The ‘Openness’ in Compatibilism” (pp. 80–92). Helm is a well-respected philosopher of religion and a long-time staunch defender of theistic… Read More »
This is part four of eleven in a series responding to the essays in Ben Arbour’s edited volume, Philosophical Essays against Open Theism (Routledge, 2019). In this post I tackle chapter 4 by David Alexander, “Open Theism and Origins Essentialism: A New Argument Against Open Theism” (pp. 71–79). In this essay, Alexander argues for a… Read More »
This is part three of eleven in a series responding to the essays in Ben Arbour’s edited volume, Philosophical Essays against Open Theism (Routledge, 2019). In this post I tackle chapter 3 by Ben Arbour, “A Few Worries About the Systematic Metaphysics of Open Future Open Theism.” Unlike the previous chapter by Visser, this is… Read More »
This is part seven of eleven in a series responding to the essays in Ben Arbour’s edited volume, Philosophical Essays against Open Theism (Routledge, 2019). In this post I tackle chapter 7 by Robert B. Stewart, “On Open Theism Either God Has False Beliefs, or I Can Know Something That God Cannot” (pp. 110–118). This… Read More »
This is part two of eleven in a series responding to the essays in Ben Arbour’s edited volume, Philosophical Essays against Open Theism (Routledge, 2019). In this post I tackle chapter 2 by Sandra Visser, “God’s Knowledge of an Unreal Future.” Despite her not being an open theist, her essay is overall very congenial toward… Read More »
With this post I begin a series of responses to eleven essays in a book edited by Ben Arbour titled Philosophical Essays against Open Theism (Routledge, 2019). (As an aside, Ben was a friend, a good scholar, and a model Christian. In November of 2020 he and his wife Meg were both tragically killed by… Read More »